coming back

I've been going to yoga a lot lately because I've consciously felt the need for physical and mental recovery. At the beginning of our class today the teacher spoke about the distractions that kept her from her daily morning practice that morning. Instead of being at her mat, she would find herself at her desk with her computer or on her bed with her phone. Each time she would come back to the mat. "Don't feel guilty," she suggested. "Just keeping coming back."

I spent the last year and half away from this blog, playing briefly and intermittently with another one centered on monthly updates of my rotations, since my residency schedule has me thinking of my life in terms of what I'm working at for four weeks at a time. It never became a flow or an escape in the way that this place was for me in medical school, for different reasons. Obviously, I've had less time, space, and energy. Less obviously, I've realized that this kind of compartmentalization isn't really me. When I started this blog, I painstakingly re-entered entries from my previous blog onto it, to maintain a continuity (one that no one else but me experienced). I thought that with the move and graduation I should start over and grow. But what I've wanted most is to come back.

In some ways this makes it easier to make space for something that I don't want to lose--my desire to record, process, and share by writing. During some rare but strongly felt times, I think I didn't commit enough to something that's felt most natural to me, and I get sad. I think about writing silly stories on the typewriter as a kid, about the long afternoons with the high school newspaper, the intense focus on essays as an English major, and most personally this blog. And I wonder, was it worth it to have sacrificed such a big part of me, a part I never had to force for any external reason? And I find it hard to admit that I never thought it would've had to be sacrificed to such a large degree. But it turns out that medicine is hard, and that many parts of it don't come to me as naturally as it may for others, so I'm left with less reserve that I anticipated. And with that reserve, I've found it easier to invest in being physically active, prioritizing climbing and running over sitting down to write.

This is partly because medicine has been so emotional for me, that it seemed both easier and healthier to use any free time letting movement seep that from me, than to steep it more deeply into words. And while I don't regret using those moments that way, I look back and feel a lost link. Now that I've looked, I won't feel guilty and I won't look anymore. I'd just like to continue.